To have a good quality and valuable website you need to apply a lot of effort to ensure that your website stays this way to start with, as time goes on this will ease and your site will begin to stand on it's own feet 'organic' as I say.
Below is the first step I take to ensure all of the web site projects I am involved with follow a strong, good practice method.
Your Idea & the planning of your site
Every website is based on an idea, now this may be to provide a solution to a found issue or just a resource for information such as our website design blogg, or you may have your idea for a new website as you have developed a product you wish to market and promote on-line, what ever your reasons for the idea at this stage it is just that, your idea.
Lets get a plan in place for how to move this forward first of all.
Planning for success requires content and good quality website content at that, ensure you think this process through as this is going to create the 'Value' of your site.
Start by gathering keywords specific to you and your industry by using some of the on-line website keyword tools out there, something like Google's keyword Checking Tool is ideal, create a list of 5 key words and 5 key phrases for each keyword first at a minimum, if you can do more, then do more this is just a guide and what I would class as a standard minimum website structure requirement, the list populated by the tool will also give you a good selection of page ideas as well.
The keyword research you are doing now is all part of the planning process and a good quality selection of targeted keywords and phrases at this early stage will put you in a good standing for a sensational website.
"Good foundations make for a strong structure!"
As a guide I would advise a good starting point of at least 25 pages based on 5 top level pages and 5 content pages for each top level page, so start by writing down the key (top level) content titles / page names, a minimum of 5 are required based on your chosen key words.
For example:
Next we move on to create our second level headings, but notice how the titles are keyword specific but very vague at the moment, as we go down the levels these become more targeted and specific.
So the second level headings will look something like this:
The key thing here is specific and targeted content, create a single page to each service or area of offered service, do not try cutting corners by bundling all of the roofing information for example on one page then details about your extensions services on another as the 'value' of the content you will spend your valuable time writing will have been wasted.
Spend the time now and see the rewards soon enough, this also puts you in a good standing as an authority web site, the structure you will be displaying using this method is that of your big corporate sites as well, so you are now in the league of the big time here.
This is how you structure your website to maximise your potential for higher volumes of traffic, in the world of the web your on-line position can never be guaranteed, but you can certainly put all of the good practices in place to ensure that your site stands the best chance of being the top listed as a result of your hard work, research and efforts.
A word of caution, make sure firstly that you do not put all of your main keywords on the same page, secondly make sure that your different pages do not target the exact same keyword, make each page focus on one primary keyword or phrase and one further relevant phrase to the primary.
Make sure you get the site structure correct first before moving on, go over this one, two three times if you need too, just make sure you have managed to maximise the potential and focused each top level and second level of key phrases as best you can for your industry sector, maybe take a moment to see how your competitors under the search terms are appearing and how their site structure is made up, after all it is working form them as they are top of the search engine you are using!
So by now you should be the best part of the way towards having a good understanding of what makes a high quality website structure.
If you are planning a website project or require the services of a web site designer such as Duello Media then please contact us to discuss your needs.
Website structure: Summary
1) Research your keywords & phrases
2) Create a list of your top level page titles from the chosen keywords (5 minimum recommended)
3) Populate a further list of second level key phrases specific to each top level keyword (5 minimum recommended per top level keyword)
4) Layout your site structure so you can visually see clearly how your websites navigation will take your sites visitors around to the information thy require.
5) Review, revise, review again, and revise until you are sure that your site structure could not be improved any more.
